Too Many Carrots and Not Enough Sticks

by Andy Caldwell

Too many carrots and not enough sticks. Photo by Daniel Dan on Unsplash

Unfortunately, the good people of Cuyama and a majority of our county supervisors can’t tell the difference between a carrot and a grape!  Moreover, they are convinced that the water table beneath the surface of the earth is one giant bathtub, instead of barely connected diversely stratified aquifers!

Historically, the water beneath a property belonged to the property owner overlying the aquifer.  This is critically important to farmers because if they don’t have access to the water underlying their property then they simply own dirt, meaning they can’t grow anything.  However, the State of California has dramatically changed historic water laws by way of the State Groundwater Sustainability Act.

Our state has been criminally remiss in building additional dams, reservoirs, and additional means (pipelines and canals) to convey water from northern California which typically has tremendous amounts of rain and snow, to So Cal which is mostly desert or semi-arid at best.  This, even though voters have approved billions of dollars in bond measures just for that purpose.  In fact, California hasn’t built a new dam in some 42 years even though our population has grown nearly 75% in the meantime.  Moreover, upwards of 40% of the water in storage is no longer reserved for use during droughts, instead the water is released for fish habitat!  To add insult to injury, the CA Coastal Commission has rejected efforts to build additional desalination plants.

Because of this dereliction of duty, many water basins in the state are in some form of overdraft meaning we are taking more water out of the aquifer than is being replaced.  Cuyama is in severely critical overdraft.  Exacerbating this situation are two companies, Grimmway and Bolthouse, from Kern county that grow carrots in Cuyama while pumping some 60,000 acre feet of water from the aquifer every year.  The Ground Water Sustainability Act, which was created to halt significant and unreasonable reduction of groundwater storage, is slated to force these companies to reduce their water usage by some 66% in the next two decades to bring the basin into balance. That is, instead of creating additional abundant water supplies, we are fighting over scarcity.  The carrot companies are seeking to adjudicate, meaning they want to ensure they don’t solely bear the water cuts in the valley.

Caught up in this maelstrom is a vineyard 10 miles to the west of Cuyama that is owned by the Harvard endowment.  James Ontiveros, a local who is a 9^th generation California resident, put together the proposal to build the vineyard that Harvard invested in, and Kevin Merrill, who is also a local and a 7^th generation Californian, manages the vineyard.  The vineyard is producing top quality grapes for local wineries, including wines rated in the top 100 in the world!  The vineyard uses some 830 acre feet per year.  However, the vineyard operators need to install water ponds so that water can be pumped on the grapes to prevent them from freezing.  The ponds would utilize approximately another 100 acre feet of water per year for frost protection but once thawed the water would double as, and thereby replace, the need for that amount of irrigation water!

Both the local Cuyama committee charged with administering the State Groundwater Sustainability Act and the State Dept of Water Resources, which must approve local groundwater management plans, gave this vineyard a green light to proceed with the frost ponds because this project was not expected to adversely affect the Cuyama valley water table.  Nevertheless, three county supervisors denied the project!   While the carrots are using some 60,000 acre feet of water per year, these ponds would have only used a mere 100 acre feet from an aquifer 10 miles away from the over-drafted basin!  Carrots notwithstanding, these supervisors should get the stick.